LA Weekly from Los Angeles, California • 52

mffr -U' -i L.A.WEEKLY August 13-19, 1982 52 FILM Turn yours into employment Make-up Artist Photographer Movie "Extras" Party Entertainers Personal Assistants Coke Server Private Investigators Flexible hours, full time, part time, and temporary. I Ths Job Factory 1744 Westwood ls Angeles SpecialLsts non-traditional employment 475-9521 Membership fee: $23 No feeemployer Service free to employers UA CINEMA CENTER Westwood 475-9441 Westwood Btvd, 1 BIK So. ot Wiishire lenses few men had raised to their eyes before, and he saw not history, nor even art. He saw a world where heroes had once walked and became an observer held in their bonds. They lifted him and he lifts us, into the-light of their destiny.

But light is really a half-light, when the destiny of the many has no meaning, only the destiny of the one. And yet. No one before Gance and no one after him has seen through 1 his lenses with such stunning effect. His neglect is one of the shames of our culture, just as his oi is one of its values. Not to see Napoieor is to compound the one and- falsify the other Napoleon should be seen, but it should be see'- with reservation.

(GV) AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN For once Richard.Gere got himself a part whirl- would soften some of the coldness at his gut He plays Zack, a street kid who grows up caring for nobody but himself until he learns the hard way how to love other people in Naval Air Officer Candidate School. But the story is exactly as hammy as my summary makes it sound, something of a throwback to those films from the '40s when it was the exception rather than the rule for the male lead not to like himself, and Gere is no John Garfield. Tough vulnerability is not his strong point and probably never will be; consequently, character and plot remain as writer Douglas Day Stewart wrote them a discouraging distance apart. Lou Gossett as Sgt. Foley, David Keith as Gere's only friend, and Debra Winger as the love interest all do better with what little they were given, and, in fact, Gossett and Keith are so good their strength could have become another of the picture's weaknesses if Taylor Hackford had not been such a relaxed director.

No pretense if profundity here, just a straight-ahead staging of story, thin as it is, and ample room for the actors to play with their performances. And unpersuasive as it is, at least the film will not act as an advertisement for the military. (GV) POLTERGEIST Writer-producer-overseer Steven Spielberg has found his fright, right where all the real fright exists in America; in the living room, in the toy-closet, in the bedroom. There's something awful living underneath all those neat houses that look so much alike, says Poltergeist. The story pits the awfulness of what's "out there against the resilient innocence that always distinguishes Spielbergs characters.

For what is beautifully unexpected in Poltergeist is that you're not so much frightened as wide-eyed NIGHT SHIFT Because I was never a big fan of Happy Days, didn't hold out much hope for a film starring Henry Wmkler and directed by Ron Howard, but I came out cf this one very surprised. It's genuinely funny and well made. Henry Winkler iS a steml.r-t -n be Oy Morgue who gets tiuhdrvc-d hv rus met sma't assistant (M'Chael i a rt-tsc as a Trent for a i vVvy is Idea lacks realism ,1 -q -cm; liming both on tHc il -is 1 1 y-r pv I i I'uO Ot MlChciel IV- HTO eforn nr: amses, and his'de 3 S3 m.At'-s up tor tne v.Aikci.'i-n-r around me pcnpnery Ti.oy: so mo pnnrny but gags at mpm's, of black and Mexican poome me fortunately few and far between Tne-v were cdvs-usiy not 3 to be rarest or hostile, but fhevre slid significant insofar as Ron Howard reveals himself to be a director cf real talent and potential iFXF) NAPOLEON As a sensory experience, there is simply no equal to Abel Gance's Napoleon. The intensity of its images and their rhythms take the breath away and exhilarate the body, touching places and hungers that are hard to name. To see the young Napoleon at his first command in a snowball fight, is to see the savage determination of the child swell to proportions so pure, so thrilling, that a movie screen somehow becomes the world, the only window through which all life can pass.

And to see, at last, the triptych unfold after an hour of rather desultory story-telling, is not to see the screen stretch, so much as to see it grow round, full, incandescent, with optical sparks flying out of a spirit few artists have ever been able to duplicate, much less command, as Gance does. But it's that very spirit one must wonder about. For this Napoleon rides astride history as he might his horse. He is always outsized, always outside both nature and man, picking and choosing the moments when he may master both. That is his beauty, his strength, his grace, and in the end, his divinity.

For this is Napoleon as god, and as god he gives both life and liberation to mankind. And whatever else Napoleon may have been, he was hardly all and only that. So perhaps the places and hungers are not hard to name after all. In 1927, Gance was looking back upon an increasingly remote and violent past from an increasingly dire and violent present, through IU: nvffWf I i v.vwV..wVW,.',.v AHigh Flying Comedy. -wn" COLUMBIA PICTURES Presents A BROWN PRODUCTION StamngCHEECH" MARIN AND TOMMY CHONG In THINGS ARE TOUGH ALL OVER Director of Photography BOBBY BYRNE Written MARIN THOMAS CHONG Associate Producers SHELBY HDDIS and DEBORAH MANNIS Produced by HOWARD BROWN Directed by TOM AVILDSEN KSTWCTtlKwj NOW PLAYING At N'l( Tn rrVuHT MX NOW PLAYING I OIL 7- f-FWhAU 643 i iLilYWOOD NORTHRIDGE Foshion Center Cinema 993 0111 REDONDO BEACH South Boy Cinema 370 6396 SHFSMAN OAKS Sherman Oaks Cinema 986 9669 SIMI Larwin Twin 805526-6357 THOUSAND OAKS UA Movies 805497-6708 W0001AN0 HILLS UA Warner Confer 999 2130 i nClfKXBV STEREO fAILY AT MOST THEATRES iiiniirmnri nn hmrmt umi.